The Royal College of GPs has welcomed a £5 million grant aimed at giving GPs better access to cancer diagnostic tools. Cancer Research UK (CRUK), which is funding the research project, said having more effective ways to diagnose cancer in GP surgeries would save both doctors’ and patients’ time, and reduce anxiety for patients.

The charity has announced its £5 million funding for the
"revolutionary” CanTest project as part of its Catalyst Award, which it
said "aims to help researchers from around the world deliver
trailblazing progress in their field with long-lasting results”. CanTest
will investigate and develop new ways for GPs, physician’s assistants
and nurse practitioners to diagnose cancer in GP surgeries. It will
assess the accuracy, cost effectiveness and suitability of a range of
diagnostic methods and tools, with the aim of cutting both the wait for
diagnosis and the number of referrals.

The project will involve
researchers from across the UK (the Universities of Cambridge, Exeter
and Leeds and University College London) and several international
institutions, who will collaborate with GPs as well as scientists from
multiple disciplines who are looking at diagnostic tests. It will also
establish an International School for Cancer Detection Research in
Primary Care, to build a research community and train and support
scientists who want to enter this field, which the charity said would
help "place the UK at the forefront of developing and implementing new
cancer tests for GPs surgeries”.

Lead researcher Professor Willie
Hamilton, from the University of Exeter said: "As a GP myself, I know
that it can be frustrating to wait weeks for results before making any
decisions for my patients. We’re trying to reduce this time by assessing
ways that GPs could carry out these tests by themselves, as long as
it’s safe and sensible to do so.”

Cancer Research UK chief
executive Sir Harpal Kumar added: "This collaboration will help us
discover new and more effective ways to diagnose cancer by applying
different methods to GP surgeries, and finding out what really works for
them on the job. … This has potential not only to save GPs’ and
patients’ time, but also to reduce the anxiety patients feel when
waiting for their results.”

The RCGP pointed out that GPs already
appropriately refer people suspected of having cancer, but said they
would welcome access to new or improved diagnostic tools. College chair
Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard said: "GPs are dealing with increasingly
complex diseases in our surgeries – things that just a decade ago would
have been referred immediately to secondary care – and this has only
been made possible through advances that have come out of research done
in the community, led by academic GPs in medical schools.”

She
went on: "Any tool or method that is developed as a result of this
research must be properly and rigorously evaluated before being rolled
out widely, to ensure that it is safe for patients and supports GPs to
deliver the best care possible. We know that CRUK and a collaboration of
UK academic departments of general practice are ideally placed to
deliver this high quality evidence.

"Giving GPs direct, rapid
access to diagnostic tools is something that the RCGP has long been
calling for, and we’re pleased to be continuing our work with Cancer
Research UK in an area which could make a real difference to our
patients’ lives.”